Deep in the rugged hills of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a meandering river harbors giant fish that once thrived throughout Lake Superior and its tributaries.
The last spawning run of coaster brook trout along the south shore of the Great Lake has been protected for years. About the only thing interrupting the thick patch of wilderness surrounding their river is fresh wolf tracks in the snow.
But 10 miles inland, where the Salmon Trout River begins as a tiny brook, men are digging for riches. They’ve found a small but valuable deposit of nickel and copper a few hundred feet below the river, prompting a fierce debate about the future of one of the last remote areas in the Midwest.
If the state of Michigan approves, Kennecott Minerals Co. will drill an underground mine in a desolate highland known as the Yellow Dog Plains. The Utah-based company promises 120 jobs during the five- to eight-year life of the mine, which would yield up to a half-billion pounds of precious metals.
The project is opposed by a disparate group of environmental activists, Native Americans and local residents. They’re joined by the affluent Huron Mountain Club–a cluster of lakefront summer homes so exclusive that Henry Ford originally was denied membership. Most of the river runs through the club’s 20,000-acre hemlock and maple forest.
Despite the area’s long history of mining, many who live here contend the short-term profits aren’t worth the potential for long-term damage to the Salmon Trout and another stream popular with anglers.
Nickel and copper extracted from the mine would be laced with sulfide ore, a byproduct that when exposed to air and water generates sulfuric acid and heavy metals that opponents fear could leach into nearby waters. Critics also worry about ore trucks rumbling on backcountry roads, changing the character of heavily wooded areas that now draw hunters, hikers and snowmobilers.
Kennecott said the mine will operate safely, and the company wrote its proposal to satisfy a year-old state mining law heralded as the nation’s toughest.
“The mining industry has learned from the mistakes of the past,” said Jon Cherry, the company’s project manager. “We’ve taken a number of steps to ensure this will have virtually no impact on the environment.”
The long-simmering battle has produced thousands of pages of competing studies and legal briefs, including a plea to protect the coaster brook trout under the federal Endangered Species Act. Such a designation would make it far more difficult to develop the mine. Opponents have filled the state’s permitting docket with studies and reports documenting environmental woes at sulfide mines, such as acidic runoff that turns rivers orange.
After a yearlong review, Michigan environmental regulators tentatively signed off on the project last month. They promised to delay a final decision until after public hearings, to be held March 6-8 in nearby Marquette.
A new mineral rush
Mining is deeply ingrained in the region’s history and culture, though it is relegated mostly to memories and museums these days. Only two iron mines still operate, down from 600 during the early part of the last century. The last major copper mine closed in 1968.
The new mineral rush is fueled by rising demand for nickel, used to make batteries and stainless steel, among other things. Prices are high enough that Kennecott and a handful of other companies bought thousands of acres of mineral rights in the UP during the last decade.
“The company is making an appeal to go back to the old days when mining first brought people to the UP,” said Russell Magnaghi, director of the Center for Upper Peninsula Studies at Northern Michigan University. “But mining no longer is our economic mainstay. We’re looking more toward tourism today.”
Past a barn painted with “No Sulfide Mining” in large letters, the road winding through woods near Big Bay ends at the Huron Mountain Club’s gate. Few are allowed past the guardhouse other than the 50 member families and contractors working on their cedar cottages.
Club members have a long history of ecological stewardship. A management plan for their land was drawn up in 1938 by Aldo Leopold, the conservationist considered one of the fathers of the nation’s wilderness system. Henry Ford won his membership after blocking a state road that would have skirted the edge of the property.
Coaster brook trout–named for their tendency to hang around the lakeshore for most of the year–swim up the river to spawn in late autumn. Scientists think the fish survived here in part because the river wasn’t torn up by logs floated for timber companies.
Overfishing, habitat destruction and competition from introduced species like the coho salmon decimated the coasters in most of the UP’s other streams. Only about 200 are left in the Salmon Trout; the other remaining spawning runs are in Isle Royale National Park and remote rivers on the Canadian side of the lake.
“It’s one of the most beautiful fish you will ever see, bigger than most brook trout with a brilliant red belly,” said Peter Dykema, a Washington lawyer and club member who has been involved in efforts to block the proposed mine. “It’s a special fish in a very special place.”
Apart from the risks of normal mine operation, opponents say, caustic pollution from an accident or mine collapse could wipe out what’s left of the coaster brook trout and scar surrounding lands that are home to bear, moose and other wildlife.
“In other words, this is a horrible place to put a mine,” said Cynthia Pryor, director of the Yellow Dog Watershed Preserve, one of the groups fighting the proposal.
Near where the river begins–and off the club’s property–the terrain is so impassible it requires a large tracked vehicle called a snowcat to reach the spot where Kennecott wants to start digging. The nickel and copper are underground about a half-mile away.
Project’s `punching bag’
Cherry, the project manager, jumps out into knee-deep snow armed with schematics and a well-honed pitch for the safety of the mine.
To avoid problems with acidic pollution, he said, all of the ore would be loaded onto trucks and sent to an Ontario smelter. The metals would be dug out of the mine in layers, each one backfilled with waste rock and concrete to prevent a collapse.
Any water from the mine or the aboveground site would be drained into a treatment plant. The treated water then would be pumped into the ground to seep back into the Salmon Trout.
“The water will be clean enough that we could bottle it and sell it,” said Cherry, who described himself as the project’s “face and punching bag.”
He noted that state regulators have said the plan appears to meet the requirements of the new mining law, written with environmental groups’ help.
Critics said Kennecott failed to answer several questions the state asked on the mine, including whether the design would prevent a collapse that could harm the river. They’re pressuring Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm to intervene.
In a letter to her staff, Granholm wrote that although the mine “has the potential to provide significant economic benefit to the local community,” the surrounding wilderness is “an extraordinary endowment that we hold in trust for the benefit of our citizens. This sacred trust must be protected.”
Critics wonder how that sentiment squares with the state’s decision to move Kennecott’s proposal forward.
“Mining historically has been a big deal up here, but they picked a bad spot to start it up again,” said Bill Kinjorski, who owns a canoe and kayak shop in Big Bay. “The trouble is it looks like a disaster waiting to happen.”
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mhawthorne@tribune.com
